I am getting a weird feeling this time that there wont be a pull back or at least it will not be like most times and that it may go up and stay there for a time after. I just did not see the increase in PPS like we normally do this time. Something seems different this time, so on that note I guess anything gos. Then again there is really nothing going on after the CC so maybe some will pull money out looking to put it somewhere else. If that is the case I can wait another month till May OEM sales come out I think at least then I wont miss the slow grind up in PPS.

Analysts Round-Up . . Yeehaw Pardner

Several analysts provided upbeat pre-earnings comments today:

Wunderlich Securities analyst Matthew Harrigan repeated his Hold rating, but lifted his target price to $1.25, from $1. He adds that a sustained recovery in U.S. auto sales to the 12 million unit annual rate would push his valuation estimate up to $1.50. He expects Q1 sales of $672.9 million with EBITDA of $138.2 million and “essentially break-even” EPS. He estimates ARPU at $11.06, and subscriber acquisition costs of $64.36.

Barrington Research analyst James Goss this morning repeated his Outperform rating on the shares; he also see a break-even quarter, with revenue of $682.2 million Goss writes that one potential catalyst for the stock could be inclusion in in stock indexes that had removed the shares as the stock price tumbled. Goss keeps his $1.25 target.

Lazard Capital analyst Barton Crockett repeated his Buy rating and $1.35 target. He sees revenue of $666 million, adjusted EBIRDA of $137 million and a profit of a penny a share. Crockett thinks the company will raise its full-year 2010 EBITDA guidance from the current $550 million to $600 million or higher.

Satellite Standard Group analyst Spencer Osborne, in his usual wait-and-see style, does not offer a price target but sees revenue of $704-$712 million, adjusted income from operations of $120-$135 million and EPS of breakeven to a 1 penny profit. Osborne, perhaps the only analyst who actually understands the fundamental metrics of the company, estimates ARPU of $11 and subscriber acquisition costs of $70.

I spoke earlier with with an exhausted Osborne, who will be anchoring live coverage of the conference call tomorrow morning beginning at 7:00 A.M. eastern on Sirius Buzz Radio, who said, "overall the call will carry a positive tone, and should be well received, in particular if they are able to report a positive EPS. The focus will be on guidance, growth, and better economic conditions."

Interesting take by the analysts. Looks like I am slightly more bullish on revenue than they are. It will be an interesting conference call tomorrow.

Spence . . the one thing I haven't heard you address is "one-time-charges"

I suppose we agree that there will be some "one-time-charges" related to the debt refinancing that took place during Q1 . . . the question is whether or not those charges will have an appreciable impact on EPS . . .

I am looking for a contrarian angle here and wondersing if MSM & thestreet.CON will look to sandbag the call (the latter of course to seed a short position for Jimmy's buddies) with misleading headlines that play off any potential one-time-charges

from paidcontent.org

Could Sirius Do A Better Sales Job?

When Sirius XM (NSDQ: SIRI) announces its earnings before the market opens Tuesday, analysts will be looking for financial results; the subscriber numbers were pre-released weeks ago with improvements in every key area, including converting trial subs to paying. But could that 45.2 percent conversion rate be even better if the satellite radio company improved its sales style? And could it be worth more?

As mentioned here before, my household has been on a six-month new car trial and has to decide soon whether or not to re-up. The first effort (and so far the only one) from Sirius to get us to do just that arrived a few days ago: a plain, white letter with a format mixed between bill and offer, along with a card listing the 130 radio channels in the basic package. Twelve months for the price of 10 ($129.50) or 24 months for the price of 19 ($245); monthly ($12.95) or quarterly ($38.85). So far, so good.

The primary goal seems to be renewing the current deal, and given that what Sirius needs first and foremost is that conversion, it’s not a bad one. But it’s also missing chances to entice our renewal with a service upgrade and to add us as users outside the car. No mention of the “Best of XM” package unless you get to the bottom of the channel listing. (The Sirius Everything+Best of XM package, available only on some radios, runs $16.99.) No effort to upsell to an online subscription, say something like sign up now and get online, usually $2.99 a month, for $1 month or the like. No mention of the iPhone app. You have to know about those last two by osmosis, look for packages online or call. Log in to handle it online, nothing changes. No incentive to upgrade.

There’s also no effort to let potential subs know there are cheaper options, including a family pack ($11.95) and a la carte.

The fine print: The letter said to respond by May 9 to get the renewal offer; the fine print said it was good through May 24. The really fine print says month-to-month can only be done over the phone, not through the form. That’s also the only place a prospective subscriber hears anything about the music royalty fee, with no mention that it adds $1.98 a month to the standard $12.95—which means the price you’re seeing isn’t the price you’ll be paying. (‘Free’ months don’t incur a royalty.) There’s also a threat of a $2 fee every time you get a paper invoice.

Sirius has made tremendous improvements in the last year, aided by some financial stability courtesy of a key investment by Liberty Media (NSDQ: LINTA). It even stayed above $1.00 enough days in a row last month to avoid being delisted by Nasdaq. I’m not sure why its direct marketing is stuck in the last decade.

And the verdict was clear: While Sirius XM stock has gotten its share of flack the past year for trading in "penny stock" territory, many investors apparently believe that those days are long gone. Sirius stock, according to 75.4% -- or 1,207 -- of those we polled, will continue to show more upside potential and begin drawing in institutional investors.

Meanwhile, 22.4% of the investors we polled believe that Sirius stock will continue to show more upside potential, but remain a high-risk play. A mere 2.2% of respondents said they believe that, as the result of another round of auto-sector weakness, Sirius XM shares will suffer.

The price targets for Sirius XM are varied, hitting figures such as $1.30 and $1.50 -- subject to revision after Sirius XM makes its first quarter announcement on May 4; Sirius XM stock settled at $1.18 Friday, down 1.9%. Its shares are trading up 1.9% at $1.20 Monday morning.

A good example of today's Sirius XM investor can be found in Burleson, Texas, in the form of retail investor Ron Reed. Reed, whose initial Sirius XM investment has nearly tripled, told Reuters that he's in the stock for "the long haul."

Reed purchased the stock about a year ago at 42 cents a share, and had at some point considered selling off the shares when it made only 60 cents by the end of 2009, rather than the ballpark $2 he'd been hoping for, he told Reuters. But with the company's strengthening fundamentals gaining more notice each day, Reed says his doubts about Sirius XM seem to have largely faded away.

On Apr. 28, Sirius XM announced that the company is retiring $114 million of debt. It said that on June 1, the company will redeem all of its outstanding 10% senior PIK secured notes due 2011 at a redemption price of 100% plus accrued interest.

"Our strong cash position, strong first-quarter subscriber growth and the improving outlook for the economy have put us in position to retire these notes a year ahead of schedule," SIRIUS XM CFO David Frear said. "The early retirement of these notes will reduce interest expense and increase our free cash flow."

Whether you still think that Sirius XM stock "would be a great short, except it's not worth anything!," as one recent reader of TheStreet commented on TheStreet; or you believe that "Siri will be at $2.50 by year-end," as another predicted, Sirius XM investors who are tired of hearing their stock being put down are undoubtedly feeling some sense of vindication by now.

Sherlock Holmes Chimes-in with Erudite Analysis

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Sirius XM(SIRI) appears to be a drastically different company when compared to where it was a year ago, a sentiment that will likely be echoed after the satellite provider posts first-quarter results Tuesday.

Last year, Sirius XM posted a first-quarter loss following a sharp drop in net subscribers. The release came several weeks after Liberty Media saved the company with a $530 million capital infusion. On the day of the earnings release, Sirius XM's stock fell to 43 cents.

Fast-forward to now: Sirius XM hit a new 52-week high of $1.25 Monday ahead of Tuesday's report. Fears of a Nasdaq delisting have vanished, and investors already have a pretty good idea of how the company's first-quarter report will shape up.

In an earnings pre-release last month, Sirius XM said it added 171,441 net subscribers in the first quarter of 2010, compared to a year-ago net subscriber decline of 404,422. Churn, which measures how well Sirius XM is retaining customers, fell to 2% from 2.2% in the same quarter of 2009.
Perhaps the most crucial improvement for Sirius XM has been in the conversion rate metric, which measures how many free-trial subscribers convert to paying customers. For a company that has pinned its success to auto in-dash installations, the conversion rate has become its primary measure of success. The rate rose to 45.2% in the first quarter of 2010 from 44.6% a year ago.

"In our opinion, one of the more important trends is the increasing conversion rate," Barrington Research analysts James Goss and John Hain wrote in an earnings preview Monday. "We feel the improving conversion rate is demonstrative of consumers' continued demand for the company's programming and services."

What isn't known is how Sirius XM performed on the top and bottom lines. One year ago, Sirius XM said the first-quarter net loss attributable to shareholders was $236.6 million, or 7 cents a share, and revenue totaled $586.99 million.

Those numbers have already improved for Sirius XM. In the fourth quarter of 2009, Sirius XM said it had revenue of $676.17 million and net income of $14.16 million, or breakeven on a per-share basis.

No analyst covering Sirius XM is expecting a profit in the first quarter on a per-share basis, but that's mostly due to the large number of shares outstanding. Sirius XM currently has 3.88 billion shares outstanding, or more than 6 billion on a fully-diluted basis to account for Liberty Media's preferred share stake.

"If you take a small net income figure and you divide it a few billion times, it'll round to break even," Barrington's Hain said in a phone interview Monday.
Barrington is forecasting net income of about $15.2 million, Hain said, while revenue should increase to $682.2 million. That's above the Thomson Reuters consensus of analysts of $671.3 million and Sirius XM's fourth-quarter revenue total of $676.2 million.

Wunderlich Securities analyst Matthew Harrigan is forecasting revenue of $672.9 million, also above the Wall Street average. He also expects Sirius XM to break even for the quarter, acknowledging that the company's large base of retail shareholders would prefer to see something on the bottom line.
"Optically, it's always nice to make money," Harrigan added. "But given the very large number of shares, that's just the way the math works."

However, a bigger focus for analysts will be U.S. vehicle sales, a timely concern as automakers will offer April sales figures Monday. Edmunds.com analysts predicted that April's Seasonally Adjusted Annualized Rate (SAAR) would fall to 11.2 million from 11.8 in March.

Now that auto sales are the primary driver for new subscriber growth, Barrington Research's analysts say they have maintained a watchful eye on consumer activity in that sector. Wunderlich's Harrigan shares a similar long-term focus.

"What matters is the sustainable run rate as opposed to how it bobs around on a monthly basis," Harrigan said. "Sirius is clearly viable. The only issue is how much the equity is worth. The long run issue will be the run rate of U.S. auto sales, which should logically be higher than where it is now if the economy recovers."

Aside from the conversion rate, Sirius XM hasn't offered other key metrics to measure its performance with automobile installations, such as the average revenue per subscriber (ARPU) and the costs of acquiring each subscriber (SAC).

Wunderlich's Harrigan said he expects ARPU to increase to $11.06, up from $10.43 in the year-ago quarter and $10.92 in the fourth quarter. SAC should climb to $64.36 from $64 in the sequential quarter and $61 from the year-ago quarter, Harrigan said, which comes mostly due to the increased number of U.S. auto sales.

Investors will also be watching to see how well Sirius XM has been managing its cash flow. In the first quarter of 2009, Sirius XM had negative free cash flow of $3.6 million. In the fourth quarter, though, free cash flow turned positive at $150 million.

In the guidance that Sirius XM provided in February, the company expects free cash flow to remain positive in 2010 and revenue of over $2.7 billion this year. To account for the improvements, Sirius XM Mel Karmazin trumpeted positive signs in ARPU, SAC, subscriber numbers and free cash flow.
"These gains position us to deliver on our 2010 guidance," Karmazin said in the earnings release.

Tomorrow, Karmazin and Sirius XM will take its first step toward achieving that goal.